Games worth discovering

This stylish open-world adventure is worth your time - Wuthering Waves Quick First Impressions

20K View2023-04-28

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Treat yourself and play it! This highly anticipated open-world action-RPG is well worth your attention and time. Wuthering Waves stays fresh and sets itself apart while still incorporating everything I love about RPGs: A capitavting narrative, impressive visuals, satisfying combat, and a fully explorable open world. Even when I didn’t feel like participating in missions, I could explore different regions, find hidden items, swim, and fully interact with the environment by using the vast array of exploration tools at my disposal. All these elements mixed together in a way that made it hard for me to put down.

TIME PLAYED

I clocked in around eleven hours on Wuthering Waves on Android. And that was between two school nights, so you know it must be good! I spent most of my time accepting quests in Tiancheng. This city served as the central hub for buying equipment, healing my characters, and crafting new tools, but it was also a centrally located spot on the map that I could use to branch out and head toward other regions.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Combat. In a phrase, the combat of Wuthering Waves is easy to learn and difficult to master. I didn’t really have a problem jumping in and experimenting with the different attack combos and special moves, but when I realized that simple things like timing my button presses could result in a heavy or light attack, it was clear there was more to the system than met the eye. Wuthering Waves ups the ante in this department by adding new Resonators (playable characters) to your party. Each character has a unique play style, skill tree, and element. With the addition of new Resonators, I could switch out team members mid-attack to perform ranged, ground, or aerial combos. Once I learned how to dodge and parry, it was easy to rebuild my stamina to perform kick-ass moves.

• The echo system. One of the cooler aspects of Wuthering Waves is the ability to absorb and collect monsters. Through the echo system, I had a reason for all the exploration I was doing. Each monster I collected increased my passive or active stats and gave me special skills I could use in the field. This was particularly useful because I could customize characters in ways that I wanted, like adding a healing ability to a primarily attack-based character.

• Open world design. This was probably my favorite aspect of Wuthering Waves. Using tools like the grappling hook to zip to higher locations, the scanner to find hidden paths, and wall climbing and parkouring over rocks made enjoying the sights and sounds of this world an exhilarating experience. Add in plenty of hidden chests, flora, fauna, and paths to explore, and I was satisfied creating my own little adventure and filling my goody bag with craftable loot.

• Visuals. Even on mobile devices, Wuthering Waves looked beautiful. From the fight animations to the environment to the design of the animals and characters, it’s clear a lot of care was taken to create this world. That said, I felt like the experience would’ve been magnified if I was playing on the big screen, so the PC version might be the way to go.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

• Controls. Wuthering Waves is the type of game that’s meant for controller support. There’s so much going on at any one time that playing on a touch screen really bugged me. Not only did I accidentally initiate abilities I didn’t want, but quickly switching between rovers or exploration tools became a hassle. Even beyond those accidental button presses, touching the screen became torture as the Android I was playing on overheated. If there’s one thing I desperately want to see in a future update, it would be the addition of proper controller support on mobile.

• Overheating. For all my mobile operators out there, please note that depending on the phone model you’re using, Wuthering Waves might cause your phone to overheat. I had to take several breaks, not because I was tired of playing, but because the device would become so hot the warning system would go off. User beware!

• Storage space. Although it’s not quite an MMORPG, a game of this magnitude still takes up a lot of space on your phone. No seriously, it was a bit over 10GB. If you’re planning on downloading it, make lots of room.

• Voice acting. I would love to see the English script for Wuthering Waves fully voice-acted. Not only would it add to the immersion, but it could really bring more emotion to the narrative.

💬 Will you play Wuthering Waves or skip it? And what would you like to see added to the official release? Let me know in the comment section!